For individuals with reduced abilities to ingest food orally under their own power, due to advanced age or illness, gastric catheters are used to supply liquid diets, such as liquid foods or nutritional supplements, or the like, into the stomachs of the patients. A gastric catheter is attached by forming an opening portion in the abdomen of the patient. When attaching the gastric catheter, the abdominal wall and the gastric wall are secured together in advance using sutures. The technology for securing the gastric wall to the abdominal wall is well known in the prior art (see Japanese Patent Application 2008-164032, for example).
In this technology, holes are provided in an insertion length adjusting plate, into which a needle comprising a suture thread insertion needle and an outer needle for securing an internal organ, such as the gastric wall, to the abdominal wall can fit. A constant interval is maintained by connecting, via a connecting plate, the outer needle and the suture thread insertion needle. The insertion depth of each needle is adjusted to the via an insertion depth adjusting plate slidable in an axial direction of the needles. The needle puncturing operation is performed simultaneously with the joining together of the suture thread insertion needle and the outer needle. First, the outer needle and the suture thread insertion needle penetrate through the abdominal wall and gastric wall to puncture the gastric lumen. Then, an inner needle within the outer needle is slid inwards so that a snare loop at the tip of the inner needle protrudes, in a direction that is perpendicular to the axial direction of the needles and from a tip hole portion of the needle. On the other hand, a thread is introduced into the suture thread insertion needle, and the tip portion of the thread passes through the inside of the snare loop. Withdrawing the inner needle draws the snare loop into the outer needle. Following this, the inner needle is removed from the body, and with both ends of the thread extracted from the body, both the outer needle and the suture thread insertion needle are removed. The thread is tied by an operation of applying a tensile force to both ends of the thread, to cause the gastric wall to be in contact with the abdominal wall, thereby enabling a tight seal therebetween.
However, as seen in the prior art, two separate plates (the connecting plate and the insertion length adjusting plate) must be used. In addition, the outer needle and the suture thread insertion needle must each individually be fitted into the holes in those two plates, and thus the puncturing operations are inefficient.